Source: Kink.com video 9799, "Taboo Teaching" featuring Madison Scott and Mark Davis.
If you watch mainstream media that deals with sex, porn and the sex industry you will soon conclude that sex is a Very Bad Thing that is Definitely NO Fun that no sane person would participate in.
Now if you are a healthy, sane, normal adult human being who has actually had sex, your experience of sex was probably that it felt WONDERFUL, maybe the best feeling EVER. Pure pleasure, the very apotheosis if you will, of pleasure. So why does mainstream media always portray it as a bad experience? There are several reasons.
1) Mainstream media is CENSORED and CANNOT portray sex accurately. They cannot show naked human beings having sex with their genitals. While there are all sorts of reasons for censoring explicit sexual imagery, some more valid than others, the undeniable fact is that censorship prevents viewers from seeing how sex is done, preventing viewers from assessing it.
It's actually a moot point: everyone who can have an orgasm knows what orgasms feel like, and everyone who has had sex with someone else knows what sexual intercourse feels like. Pictures of people having sex won't change their opinions either way. But if you cut out the explicit parts, you don't really show why people enjoy sex so much. The effect is that happy sexual relationships are portrayed most often without sexual imagery. It's just the nature of the beast.
2) Most movies (and TV shows) generally involve some conflict or other. The dramatic elements often show up in the sex scenes and generally makes them unhappy in one way or another. It's not a matter of intentionally trying to make sex look worse than it is, but overall, it has that effect. This tends to be more the case with movies and TV shows where sex is central to the plot. A movie or show about people who have a wonderful relationship with lots of happy and fulfilling sex and that's about it would be derided as porn. (It's the same reason science fiction movies and TV shows tend to be about dystopias instead of utopias. Utopias where everyone is happy and living their best lives don't tend to produce drama.) Hence, sexual relastionships that make people unhappy tend to be far more common in mainstream media than they are in real life. Once again, it's the nature of the beast, not the result of intentional censorship.
3) Culture War Issues. Sex in media is not the cental issue of the culture wars, but it is an issue. And for the people who want to censor, it is a central issue, an issue for which they have great passion. I would not be surprised to learn that some portion, maybe a very large portion, of the people who are the most strident about censorship, like that stupid little weasel Mike Lee (Senator from Utah, Crazy) have a fetish for preventing other people from having orgasms on their own terms. He has recently proposed legislation to censor all porn, basically, all images of naked men and women, having sex of otherwise. He does this kind of shit regularly, one might also say, compulsively, without success. But the bill he's put forth is straight out of the Project 2025 playbook, so things might go differently this time. I hope not.
My point is that if you haven't heard much about this it's not surprising. The general public isn't at all interested in censoring sexy stuff right now, they're a LOT more concerned with not being rendered homeless or unemployed by the economic antics of the current dementia-addled semi-octogenerian in chief. As they should be. But these censorship crazies never stop, because they're compelled to attempt censorship for their own freaky reasons.
Religion rears its ugly head, along with sex. NOW we're getting kinky! Image source: kink.com video 22717, "The Sins of Sister Summers" starring Angell Summers.
3) The Religion Grift. But there's more to it than weird sexual obsession with other people's orgasms. There are also cultural forces at work for censorship in America, primarily religious in nature. Catholics in league with Protestant evangelicals were responsible for the Hayes censorship era that hamstrung movies and TV shows for decades, and they still form the bulk of the cultural pressure for censorship, now with extra added Mormons as well. (Mike Lee is a Mormon, and they are censorious bunch.)
Mormons are also avid consumers of porn, like many evangelicals and Catholics. Three different religions, but they have censoriousness in common. And they all claim that they're doing it for good of others, most especially for (let's say it all together now!) "the chilllldreeeen."
This is, of course, bullshit. Not because many religious types aren't actually concerned with preventing children from being exposed to explicit sexual images, I'm sure many are, especially among the base. It's bullshit because the censorship never stops with the children, most especially if it's unopposed. Protecting the children is a wedge issue. If censorship succeeds "for the children" the goalposts are immediately moved to protecting the adults.
Religions want to censor sexual materials because most of them, at one time or another, were in a position to control the sexuality of their followers. In the case of Catholics and Protestants, you had to go through the church to get married, and that gave the church a powerful gripping hand on the libidos of young men. Especially since the church and the families REALLY pushed chastity on girls and women.
Now there were good practical reasons for this. From the Bronze Age to medieval times, a woman who had a child without having a mate was in for a hard time, in most societies. And safe, effective birth control did not exist. So chastity was important for young women, because men wanted to be sure that the children they were providing for were in fact their own children. At the same time, a man who could impregnate a woman without having to help care for her and her children is a reproductive winner. More offspring, no costs. Which is why the general culture tends to make chastity much less important for men.
Image source: "Filth and Sin" kink.com video 34016 featuring Ana Foxxx and Chanel Preston.
A religion that pushes chastity on young women is therefore a good thing from the viewpoint of the parents who want their daughtrs to succeed in Bronze Age and medieval societies. It's also a good thing for the state. The state's rulerse generally wants their population to increase so they'll have more agricultural workers and soldiers to make them more wealthy and powerful. They also want their population healthy, because you get more work ($$) out of healthy subjects. They also want their population to be kinda dumb and very prone to be submissive to authority. All things the Catholics, Protestant evangelicals and the Mormons are big on. (Mormons are a bit late to the party compared to the other two religions, but they do share those traits.)
All of the religions cited are against porn, but their opposition to porn is just an effect of their desire to control the sexuality of the men and women in their charge. They want to prevent young people from getting sexually aroused and doing sexual things that the church authorities can't control. Curtailing access to porn is just a means to that end. It made sense in a time with no safe, effective birth control and harsh Bronze Age morals about women who had sex outside of marriage (thanks in large part to the church).
The state finds the religious focus on celibacy outside marriage very useful, since it keeps the population growing and ensures that the men who become soldiers will be healthy, ignorant and conditioned to responding unthinkingly to authority. These are grifts that have been around for so long that they are not recognized as grifts. Now THAT'S a successful grift!
With the advent of safe, reliable birth control, however, the problem of out of wedlock childbirths is greatly reduced. Not entirely eliminated, of course, because not all young women or men have sense enough to use contraception. Plus, these religions are fighting with all their might against contraception and abortion, creating all sorts of horrifying medical stories about women who need abortion for medical reasons and can't get them in red states. The religions claim that their reason is that all life is sacred to them, even as yet unborn life.
But their real reason for fighting abortion are revealed by the fact that these religions are fighting against women's access to contraception, all forms of contraception. No pill, no IUD, no condoms, no nothing. The religious justification of this is that whether or not a woman gets pregnant as a result of having sex is, and should be, a function of God's will. But the real reason is that the religious leaders want to be the ones whose will is enforced, and their will is always that the women in their charge should be pregnant at every opportunity, which creates more followers. That's all there is to it. Every religion wants more followers because that means more money and power for the leaders. All their religious claims are simple grift. (They're against porn for the same reason: men who are masturbating to porn are not impregnating women. It is possible to do both, as I personally can attest, but that's not a major consideration for religious censors.)
Image source: Kristy Lynn and James Deen in kink.com shoot 21250, "Bribing an Officer."
4) The State Grift -- The state generally has the same goals as the religions with regard to their population: they want more citizens for more money and more power. They also want their citizens conditioned to obey authority unthinkingly and conditioned to create lots of new citizens. Catholics, Protestant evangelicals and Mormons all deliver on these demands, so the state and religions generally are tight with one another on sexual issues.
If you don't believe that the state and the major religions are in line on sexual issues, just look at the current makeup of the Supreme Court: six out of the nine current Supreme Court justices are conservative Catholics in a nation with a population that is only 20 percent Catholic. The justices were hand-picked by conservative legislators to take down Roe v. Wade, and they did it.
I should add that conservative politicians are the ones who work most substantially for religions. The left has been much less cooperative, as many Americans are either not religious at all, or are not deeply religious. They tend to vote more liberal, though they can be censorious over some issues, rarely sexual issues however. I might add that there are many Catholics who are not deeply religious often cross Catholic teachings on sexual issues, particularly contraception.
Fortunately there are forces opposing these forces. Big, powerful forces, too.
From kink.com video 36433, "Fear Play: Cherie DeVille's Roleplay Fantasy" featuring Cherie Deville and Tommy Pistol.
1) Bigger Issues To Deal With -- As mentioned before people have much bigger problems on their plates than porn. The issues that need to be dealt with are life-endangering in some cases, and life-ruining in others. It's going to be very hard to convince people who are worried about high-priced groceries and rent and mortgages to get all worked up about preventing other people from seeing images of people having sex. It's not exactly central to most people's lives right now.
There's been no groundswell over Lee's call for censorship. It has only gotten responses from some leaders among the Usual Suspect religions and conservative pols mentioned above. The people have other fish to fry.
2) Been There, Seen That -- Most of what I've talked about is familiar to most people who've followed these arguments. But here's something new: people are not prone to get roused over the dangers of porn any more because they KNOW porn. Practically all the adults in the US have had the opportunity to watch hardcore porn of whatever they like, for decades. It isn't the dark, hidden, secret sexy thing it once was, and it hasn't been since the 1970s when home video players made it possible to watch porn in complete privacy, huzzah! It's been normalized, as some like to say.
Well the political conservatives and the censorious religions have not been going huzzah! But there was nothing they could do, it was the 70s and only their core groups were interested in censoring adult videos. There were attempts at censorship but they got nowhere. And now that most Americans have had four decades to experience porn, most of them have come to the reasonable conclusion that it's just not a big deal. It's good for keeping the old libido at manageable levels when there's no prospect of managing it with a partner and that's about it. Some people have claimed to be addicted to porn, but it's hard to know to what extent it's a real problem because of course the censorious types are all over that shit. But overall, it seems to be a manageable problem.
My suspicion is that the public's familiarity with porn videos have removed the bogeyman factor from porn. Back before the 70s porn was this big dark hidden thing that could be everything the censorious types said it was. Now the censorious types are decrying the dangers of porn to people who are outside their core who know the "dangers" of porn for the bullshit that it is.
It makes for a very difficult time for censors, which is why I don't think there will be any popular groundswell for censoring porn. But that doesn't mean porn censorship won't happen. The political conservatives and the religious types don't understand that the sexuality control game is over as far as the majority of Americans are concerned. They've still got their core constituencies buffaloed, and they hope to get the rest of us under control, by re-instituting censorship of all pornography, making it dark and mysterious once again, and most of all getting a gripping hand on everyone's libido again.
This will not exactly be a great campaign issue for anyone except a few politicians in deeply conservative areas. That may not matter, because Trump, the Heritage Foundation and others are working very hard to end democracy in the US. If they succeed, voters won't matter. If the President can deport people, even citizens and legal residents, with an executive order, and so far he can, he can probably jail pornographers and and even porn viewers with an executive order.
The courts may have opinions on such orders, but the Trump administration has already demonstrated a willingness to ignore the decisions of the Supreme Court and all the other courts, and if they continue to get away with that courts will no longer have any power at all. If things get worse (and they're certainly headed in the general direction of Worse) there will probably be other Executive Orders that will put Executive Orders about porn in perspective.
I don't think porn is politically exciting enough to get banned for its own sake. I think the most likely avenue for a porn ban would be if the conservatives who run our government want to use it for a distraction to keep people's attention diverted while they do much more dangerous stuff, like end habeus corpus or declare martial law or end elections, much more important goals for them.
Although I don't think most people would support an executive order banning porn, I do think about 27 percent of the electorate will, if Trump issues one and especially if he starts using his bully pulpit to encourage his people to support banning porn. The Trumpers will support anything Trump says, no matter how ridiculous or even how harmful to them personally it might be. They've proven it time and again. And you can be sure that if the Trumpers get wound up about banning all porn, they will jump on the bandwagon with everything they've got, though that's not nearly as much as it once was.
A porn ban might succeed if used as cover for more dastardly deeds, sliding through as more energy is spent battling more pressing issues. This is very much in keeping with Project 2025 strategy. It's still a very chancy thing, but it could happen.
Now as far as the porn ban and mainstream media getting porn right, obviously if a ban succeeds, that won't happen. Not even porn will get porn right if it's banned! If porn isn't banned, the Usual Suspects will work hard to "other" porn and make it socially unacceptable. This is highly unlikely to work, because the continued availability of porn and its natural attractiveness to people will continue to normalize it, making it even less likely to get banned.
I think the real problem with mainstream media getting sex scenes right will continue to be the first two reasons I listed: the censorship of mainstream media, because explicit images of naked people having sex are unlikely to be shown in media open to people of all ages. It's not a problem, just the nature of the media. And mainstream media will likely tend to continue to interject drama into sex scenes because peaceful, happy sexual relationships aren't all that dramatic.
Where I see long-term effects will be in movies. As porn normalizes sex scenes, movies will probably allow more and more explicit scenes. It's already happened to a certain extent: Chloe Sevigny gave an explicit blowjob with a cock seen entering her mouth in "The Brown Bunny" and Sharon Stone famously flashed her pussy in "Basic Instinct" and they both continue to get roles in movies, so not much in the way of blowback for them.
However, there is one obvious counterexample, and that's Elizabeth Berkley's appearance in "Showgirls." For the story of a Las Vegas nude dancer/stripper/entertainer Elizabeth went fully naked in several scenes, and the film bombed hard. Elizabeth Berkley got a share of the blame, but the director got most of the blame. (Interestingly, "Showgirls" has since developed a cult following. I've watched Showgirls, and it didn't seem teriffically awful to me. My suspicion is that Showgirls pushed the nudity and the sexuality harder than the mainstream critics were ready for, hence the strange vigor of the bad reviews.) Fortunately Berkley's career has gotten back on track since, though not as readily as Sevigny and Stone did.
Sevigny, Stone and Berkley would probably all have been blackballed in Hollywood if their scenes had occurred 40 or 50 years ago. But since the 70s, things have been different. And unless porn gets banned, things will continue to get different. The old Bronze Age grifts of religion and the state have been destroyed by modern contraception and video technology, and the sociopaths who like controlling others will have to use other grifts or lose power. In a few decades maybe we'll develop dramatic conventions that make explicit sex scenes perfectly acceptable in some movies and TV shows. We shall see.
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Penny Pax (bottom) and Carissa Montgomery (top) in Kink.com shoot 42344.
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